Mohammad Taslimi ()
Additional contact information
Mohammad Taslimi: Department of Economics, Postal: Uppsala University, P.O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Abstract: Existing unemployment insurance systems in many OECD countries involve a ceiling on insurable earnings. The result is lower replacement rate for employees with relatively high earnings. This paper examines whether replacement rates should decrease as the level of earnings rises. The framework is a search equilibrium model where wages are determined by Nash bargaining between firms and workers, job search intensity is endogenous and workers are heterogeneous. The analysis suggests higher replacement rates for low-paid workers if taxes are uniform. The same result may hold when taxes are redistributive. Numerical simulations indicate that there are modest welfare gains associated with moving from an optimal uniform benefit system to an optimally differentiated one in both cases, i.e., uniform and redistributive taxation. The case for differentiation arises from the fact that it may have favourable effects on the tax base.
Keywords: Unemployment insurance; Unemployment; Search
30 pages, April 10, 2003
Full text files
wp2003_16.pdf
Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Ulrika Ă–jdeby ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().
RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2003_016This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:17:37.